How we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans' well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our ...health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality, and the federal budget. From the earliest developments of agriculture, a major goal has been to attain sufficient foods that provide the energy and the nutrients needed for a healthy, active life. Over time, food production, processing, marketing, and consumption have evolved and become highly complex. The challenges of improving the food system in the 21st century will require systemic approaches that take full account of social, economic, ecological, and evolutionary factors. Policy or business interventions involving a segment of the food system often have consequences beyond the original issue the intervention was meant to address.
A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System develops an analytical framework for assessing effects associated with the ways in which food is grown, processed, distributed, marketed, retailed, and consumed in the United States. The framework will allow users to recognize effects across the full food system, consider all domains and dimensions of effects, account for systems dynamics and complexities, and choose appropriate methods for analysis. This report provides example applications of the framework based on complex questions that are currently under debate: consumption of a healthy and safe diet, food security, animal welfare, and preserving the environment and its resources.
A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System describes the U.S. food system and provides a brief history of its evolution into the current system. This report identifies some of the real and potential implications of the current system in terms of its health, environmental, and socioeconomic effects along with a sense for the complexities of the system, potential metrics, and some of the data needs that are required to assess the effects. The overview of the food system and the framework described in this report will be an essential resource for decision makers, researchers, and others to examine the possible impacts of alternative policies or agricultural or food processing practices.
This paper provides an early assessment of the implications of the COVID‐19 pandemic for food supply chains and supply chain resilience. The effects of demand‐side shocks on food supply chains are ...discussed, including consumer panic buying behaviors with respect to key items, and the sudden change in consumption patterns away from the food service sector to meals prepared and consumed at home. Potential supply‐side disruptions to food supply chains are assessed, including labor shortages, disruptions to transportation networks, and “thickening” of the Canada–U.S. border with respect to the movement of goods. Finally, the paper considers whether the COVID‐19 pandemic will have longer‐lasting effects on the nature of food supply chains, including the growth of the online grocery delivery sector, and the extent to which consumers will prioritize “local” food supply chains.
Abstrait
Cette note fournit une évaluation initiale des implications de la pandémie (Covid‐19) pour les chaînes d'approvisionnement alimentaire et pour la résilience des chaînes d'approvisionnement. L'effet des chocs liés à la demande sur les chaînes d'approvisionnement alimentaire est discuté, y compris les comportements d'achat de panique des consommateurs en ce qui concerne certains articles, et le transfert soudain de la consommation liée aux services alimentaires vers les repas préparés et consommés à la maison. Les perturbations potentielles du côté de l'offre des chaînes d'approvisionnement alimentaire sont évaluées, notamment les pénuries de main‐d'œuvre, les perturbations des réseaux de transport et une fluidité moindre des marchandises à la frontière canado‐américaine. Enfin, la note examine si la Covid‐19 aura des effets à plus long terme sur la nature des chaînes d'approvisionnement alimentaire, y compris la croissance du secteur de la livraison d'épicerie en ligne, et dans quelle mesure les consommateurs accorderont la priorité aux chaînes d'approvisionnement alimentaire «locales».
Water Diplomacy Islam, Shafiqul; Susskind, Lawrence E.
2013, 20120726, 2012, 2012-07-26
eBook
Water is the resource that will determine the wealth, welfare, and stability of many countries in the twenty-first century. This book offers a new approach to managing water that will overcome the ...conflicts that emerge when the interactions among natural, societal, and political forces are overlooked. At the heart of these conflicts are complex water networks. In managing them, science alone is insufficient and so is policy-making that doesn't take science into account. Solutions will only emerge if a negotiated or diplomatic approach that blends science, policy, and politics is used to manage water networks.
The authors show how open and constantly changing water networks can be managed successfully using collaborative adaptive techniques to build informed agreements among disciplinary experts, water users with conflicting interests, and governmental bodies with countervailing claims.
Shafiqul Islam is an engineer with over twenty-five years of practical experience in addressing water issues. Lawrence Susskind is founder of MIT's Environmental Policy and Planning Program and a leader of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Together they have developed a text that is relevant for students and experienced professionals working in a variety of engineering, science, and applied social science fields. They show how new thinking about water conflict can replace the zero-sum battles that pit experts, politicians, and stakeholders against each other in counter-productive ways. Their volume not only presents the key elements of a theory of water diplomacy; it includes excerpts and commentary from more than two dozen seminal readings as well as practice exercises that challenge readers to apply what they have learned.
This study suggests a new approach to supply chain (SC) disruption risk management where SC behaviour is less dependent on the certainty of our knowledge about the environment and its changes. The ...unpredictability of the occurrence of disruption and its magnitude suggests that designing SCs with a low need for 'certainty' may be as important, if not more so, than predetermined disruption control strategies. In this setting, this study calls for the development of a new perspective in SC disruption management, i.e. low-certainty-need (LCN) SCs. A number of principles and concepts is derived in recent, relevant literature to structure the characteristics of the LCN framework and its management. Structural variety, process flexibility, and parametrical redundancy are identified as key LCN SC characteristics that ensure efficient disruption resistance as well as recovery resource allocation. Two efficiency capabilities of the LCN SC are shown, i.e. low need for uncertainty consideration in planning decisions and low need for recovery coordination efforts based on a combination of lean and resilient elements. The results allow the identification of an LCN SC framework, concepts and technologies for its implementation as well as missing themes and new research questions which contribute to a better understanding of SC disruption risks. Special focus is directed on the digital technology usage in the LCN framework implementation.
Die ökologische und soziale Relevanz von Lieferketten wird immer deutlicher. Die Einführung von Lieferkettengesetzen unterstreicht die Notwendigkeit, Menschenrechte und Umweltstandards ...sicherzustellen. Das Supply Chain Management beispielsweise in der Textilindustrie ist gefordert, nachhaltige Lösungen zu implementieren. Dabei sind nicht nur Aspekte wie Arbeitssicherheit, Arbeitszeiten und existenzsichernde Löhne von Bedeutung, sondern auch die Arbeitszufriedenheit der Beschäftigten in den Zulieferländern. Die vorliegende Praxisstudie untersucht das komplexe Zusammenspiel zwischen Lieferketten- und Personalmanagement sowie der Arbeitszufriedenheit von NäherInnen in 18 Textilfabriken in Vietnam. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Faktoren wie Führungsqualität, persönliche Karrieremöglichkeiten und physische Arbeitsbedingungen einen signifikanten Einfluss auf die Arbeitszufriedenheit und somit auf die Fluktuationsabsicht haben. Es werden Handlungsempfehlungen für Unternehmen abgeleitet, die nicht nur ihrer sozialen Verantwortung gerecht werden möchten, sondern auch die Stabilität ihrer Lieferkette sicherstellen wollen.
The development of natural product-derived drugs has some unique problems associated with the process, which can be best described as the "problem of supply". In this short review, four examples are ...given demonstrating how the "supply problem" was overcome using as examples the development of Picato® from a plant, Kyprolis® modified from a microbial metabolite, Halaven® a totally synthetic compound based on a marine sponge metabolite and Yondelis® isolated from a marine tunicate and now known to be from an as yet uncultured microbe in the tunicate. The methods used are described in each case and show how all scientific disciplines are necessary to succeed. All of these are antitumor agents and the time involved ranged from a low of 13years to greater than 29years from the initial identification of an active compound.
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate how blockchain has moved beyond cryptocurrencies and is being deployed to enhance visibility and trust in supply chains, their limitations and potential impact.
...Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative analysis are undertaken via case studies drawn from food companies using semi-structured interviews.
Findings
Blockchain is demonstrated as an enabler of visibility in supply chains. Applications at scale are most likely for products where the end consumer is prepared to pay the premium currently required to fund the technology, e.g. baby food. Challenges remain in four areas: trust of the technology, human error and fraud at the boundaries, governance, consumer data access and willingness to pay.
Research limitations/implications
The paper shows that blockchain can be utilised as part of a system generating visibility and trust in supply chains. Research directs academic attention to issues that remain to be addressed. The challenges pertaining to the technology itself we believe to be generalisable; those specific to the food industry may not hold elsewhere.
Practical implications
From live case studies, we provide empirical evidence that blockchain provides visibility of exchanges and reliable data in fully digitised supply chains. This provides provenance and guards against counterfeit goods. However, firms will need to work to gain consumer buy-in for the technology following repeated past claims of trustworthiness.
Originality/value
This paper provides primary evidence from blockchain use cases “in the wild”. The exploratory case studies examine application of blockchain for supply chain visibility.
The impact of digitalisation and Industry 4.0 on the ripple effect and disruption risk control analytics in the supply chain (SC) is studied. The research framework combines the results from two ...isolated areas, i.e. the impact of digitalisation on SC management (SCM) and the impact of SCM on the ripple effect control. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that connects business, information, engineering and analytics perspectives on digitalisation and SC risks. This paper does not pretend to be encyclopedic, but rather analyses recent literature and case-studies seeking to bring the discussion further with the help of a conceptual framework for researching the relationships between digitalisation and SC disruptions risks. In addition, it emerges with an SC risk analytics framework. It analyses perspectives and future transformations that can be expected in transition towards cyber-physical SCs. With these two frameworks, this study contributes to the literature by answering the questions of (1) what relations exist between big data analytics, Industry 4.0, additive manufacturing, advanced trace & tracking systems and SC disruption risks; (2) how digitalisation can contribute to enhancing ripple effect control; and (3) what digital technology-based extensions can trigger the developments towards SC risk analytics.
The new division of labor Levy, Frank; Murnane, Richard J
2004, 2012., 20121126, 2012, 2004-01-01, 20040101
eBook, Book
Die Autoren gehen von der Tatsache aus, dass sich die Situation auf dem Arbeitsmarkt in den letzten Jahren grundlegend verändert hat: Selbst nach einer Rezession werden die durch die Automatisierung ...oder die Verlagerung in Niedriglohnländer verloren gegangenen Arbeitsplätze nicht wieder entstehen. Analysiert werden die Einflüsse der Informationstechnik auf die Arbeitsplatzstruktur, insbesondere die Möglichkeiten der Problemlösung und Kommunikation. Es wird dabei die These abgeleitet, dass komplexe Kommunikation nach wie vor eine Domäne menschlichen Handels sein wird, und Computer auf diesem Gebiet keine Alternative darstellen. Die Gesellschaft muss sich auf diese Veränderungen einzustellen, indem eine Arbeitsteilung zwischen automatisierten Jobs und gut bezahlten und hochqualifizierten Arbeitsplätze akzeptiert und gestaltet wird. Arbeitsplätze, deren Schwerpunkt auf komplexen Problemlösungen sowie auf interpersonaler Kommunikation liegt, werden in großer Zahl entstehen. Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: deskriptive Studie. (IAB).
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